A Tool to Improve Mobility in Hospitalized Patients

Increasing mobility is important to hospitalized patients, to improve respiration, prevent complications of being in bed, and speed rehabilitation. At Virginia Mason Medical Center, we developed a patient-friendly tool — a colorful wall chart (PDF) posted at patients’ bedsides — to encourage progressive mobility by showing with simple graphics a standard sequence of increasing activities and engaging patients in tracking their own progress. The chart makes it easy for patients, families, and staff to know the patient’s goals, the schedule for increasing mobility, and daily achievements. Nurses and patient care technicians explain the tool to patients and their families, set a goal for patients to advance one phase each day, and encourage the patient to fill in the tool independently. Before we began using the tool in our medical telemetry unit, only 7 of 21 patients (33%) we followed progressed from one mobility phase to the next each day; after we started posting the tool, 21 of 29 patients we followed (72%) did so. Beyond the concrete improvement in patients’ mobility we are seeing with the tool, there is an unmeasured benefit of giving patients more ownership of their health and recovery. We believe this will ease the always-challenging transition from hospital to home.